Alternative Domains

This page looks at alternative root schemes.

It covers

• introduction - what are alternative roots and what are some issues
• a new net or merely instability - the New.Net and UNITD schemes and ICANN
• the economics of alternative root schemes - libertarian geeks and avaricious snake-oil vendors
• other alternative roots - pointers to the plethora of active and moribund 'alternatives'

As noted in the Network & GII guide elsewhere on this site, the net is based on open, globally accepted standards. That has not stopped some enthusiasts and entrepreneurs from promoting alternative domains that use different 'roots' to those of ICANN and the IETF and that implicitly involve proprietary standards.

     introduction

One root to bind them, one root to rule them all?

Establishment of alternative roots is not new. However, it is of concern because many sites with alternative names will not be readily accessible from most devices on the net (for example you will need to add a plug-in to your browser or use a particular ISP and email may not get through). And there will be confusion if an alternative site has the same name as one on the 'regular' net. The situation is analogous to someone having a telephone number that is the same as yours.

In early 2001 ICANN released a discussion draft on A Unique, Authoritative Root for the DNS, noting that

there are solid technical grounds for a single authoritative root and that ICANN should continue its commitment through established policy to such a concept and to the community-based orderly processes that surround such policy. This constitutes a public trust. ...

ICANN cannot support the concept of multiple roots except within an experimental framework, where experimentation is carefully defined. ... to change this policy would require a community consensus for the change in ICANN's character that would be entailed.

That assessment was endorsed by many of the organisation's critics and is consistent with analysis in studies such as Regulating The Global Information Society (London: Routledge 2000), edited by Christopher Marsden.

     a new net?

In 2001 most attention centred on Bill Gross' New.Net, which has been busy spawning generic TLDs that include dot-school, dot-shop, dot-golf, dot-arts, dot-scifi and dot-love. There is a somewhat disingenuous justification in its paper on The Role of Market-Based Principles in Domain Name Governance (PDF).

That document provoked an ICANN paper on Keeping the Internet a Reliable Global Public Resource: Response to New.net "Policy Paper" which dismisses the scheme as a "three-way technology pastiche" and comments that

New.net is a commercial entity seeking to promote a collection of domain names unilaterally established without participating in the Internet community's ICANN consensus process.

In 2005 Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot, a commercial successor to the short-lived UNITD, proclaimed that it offers "practically unlimited numbers of suffixes", with individual corporate/personal names being registered as TLDs. It boasted

We've already had thousands of registrations in a single day

Registration of a TLD such as 'schiphol' costs a mere US$1,000 plus an annual fee of US$240, arguably not great value for a TLD that will not be found on most browsers.

ICANN noted that the New.Net approach - anyone can set up their own alternative system - facilitates domain name conflicts across the Internet and breaks the notion of universal resolvability, the heart of the net. Paul Vixie more acerbically commented "Those who claim to be able to add new 'suffixes' or 'TLDs' are generally pirates or con-men with something to sell".

Government concern about alternative TLDs has been reflected in the US Federal Trade Commission's warning to alerting consumers considering registration of an alternative domain that they are "not readily found in routine Internet searches nor can be email be directed to those sites".

Business or community demand for alternative domains is unclear. There's real uncertainty about whether sufficient businesses will acquire such names in competition (or parallel with) the new ICANN TLDs.

Benjamin Edelman's paper Analysis of Registrations in the ARNI .BIZ Top-Level Domain for example severely questioned claims that New.Net competitor Atlantic Root Network (ARNI) - which offers five alternative TLDs including a dot-biz TLD in opposition to the dot-biz authorised by ICANN - had a major market share.

He concluded that there were a mere 297 registrations, far less than the many thousands often claimed. (Edelman's paper Analysis of Registrations in the Image Online Design .WEB Top-Level Domain was similarly scathing.)

All in all, it is difficult to see that the advantages of 'renegade' domains greatly outweight fundamental problems. In our discussion of ICANN's critics we noted that groups such as the Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC), New Zealand's Democratic Association of Domain Owners (DADNO) and the Individual Domain Name Owners Constituency (IDNO) have sought to establish parallel domain regimes.

Essentially, those regimes have failed because they have failed to address major policy and administrative questions.

Alternative domain lobby group the Top Level Domain Association (TLDA) has largely played a blame game, attacking ICANN but offering few practical proposals. Balkanising the net is not an effective response to unhappiness about ICANN or disappointment that a bid for that organisation's recognition of a new TLD has been unsuccessful.

Canadian Tim Denton, one of the more thoughtful analysts of internet regulation, asked (PDF) in 2001

What is so important to the alternative root crowd that only ICANN's failure, and the ruin of its reputation, would accomplish their goals? It seems to this observer that the alternative root crowd has assumed the rightness of its position and failed to take the argument to the people who could appreciate it. I have yet to hear a coherent well-argued case that the overthrow of the management of the DNS will lead us anywhere that sensible people would want to go, at a price that we would wish to pay.

Because, if the DNS is as much a social convention as driving, this suggests the need both for a conventional authority, and a process whereby that conventional authority is to be made manifest. How are these conventions to be developed?

ICANN at least proposes an answer, which is that a process can be devised that more or less satisfies that participants that no rules will be made which absolutely violate their interests. There is no final resolution of some of the issues inside the DNS, nor can there ever be. The alternatives are either a treaty-based organization, or the governance of domain names by something more directly emanating from the US government. One would want to see such arguments frankly made, but they have not been. In the meantime, users of the resources of the Internet want to be bothered as little as possible with the politics of DNS, just as they also make a collective choice not to be aggravated in traffic by collectively enforced rules about driving. ...

So it is with the DNS. We have a right to choose a social convention and to maintain it through political action. Like good manners, we want the usefulness of a social convention. A social convention is not a supreme good; it suffices that is useful in reducing conflicts and misunderstandings. When the domain name system becomes arbitrary, obsolete, or restrictive of choices that matter to us, we will abandon it, but not before a consensus has been reached that there is a better way to go

     where's the money

The economics of blue sky markets are uncertain. It would appear that some alternate root enthusiasts are not particularly interested in commercial exploitation: they are driven by sense of 'justice' (in our view misplaced), devilry or paranoia about ICANN and its hellish crusafe for global dominion.

For others the alternative root style is strictly commercial. Individual alternative registrars or their resellers have for example generated revenue by marketing 'pre-registered' domains names in alternate spaces that are supposedly just about to be approved by ICANN.

That is perhaps akin to selling prime waterfront real estate in Queensland or Florida, the kind that - oops - is only available when the tide goes out but will surely, truly, one day, honestly, get a development permit from the relevant regulatory agency.

It is accordingly attracted warnings by consumer protection and trade practices agencies in the US, UK and Australia. In the UK for example several vendors have been publicly required to refund money and cease advertising registrations in the dot-brit, dot-scot and of course dot-sex alternative roots. In the US the federal government forced the closure of some vendors.

Other enthusiasts - perhaps having overindulged in Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (DIC)  - have asserted that they are exempt from intellectual property legislation. Joe Baptista in 2000 sniffed at trademark concerns, commenting that -

With respect to trademarks, my reply is what trademarks, or in the words of Brother Michael Crary, 'Language was given to us by god - so enjoy.' The dot.god tld will not respect trademarks - that's not our department nor do trademarks belong on the internet. As I said, dot.god is virtual real estate. We also don't expect to respect any court decisions, if there ever are any. It is up to a court of law to get you to cancel or transfer a dot.god domain - it's not our business to do that for them.

Paul Garrin more creatively claimed that

We're shifting the naming paradigm from militarism to democracy, and fulfilling the ideal nature of the internet, which is a virtual space with no borders ... We're de-territorializing the internet, and bringing it back to the real ideal of virtual space with no national borders or hierarchies

     other alternative domains 

Among the developers or promoters of alternative domains are -

• OpenNIC - a "user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries" with dot-geek, dot-glue, dot-indy, dot-null, dot-oss and dot-parody TLDs
• ADNS - "owner" of the dot-earth, dot-usa and dot-z TLDs ("We were first to use them in business and commerce and under the law, this means that they belong to us")
• MCSNet (apparently moribund), with a dot-biz and a dot-corp
• Skyscape Communications (also apparently moribund) - with dot-sex
• American Global Network (ditto) - with another dot-earth and dot-usa
• Alternic (ditto) with dot-xxx
• IODesign - with dot-web
• AlternativeDomains - promoting dot-ws ('web site')
• DotGod - with dot-god and dot-satan
• Boroon (Business Oriented Root Network) - a German-based promoter whose arguments are articulated in a paper (PDF) on A Polymorphous Name Space for the Internet of the Future and a White Paper on Further Development of the Internet (PDF)
• the Cesidian Root, developed by self-declared monarch and bishop Cesidio Tallini, who boasts that "it can be demonstrated that Cesidian law really governs the Internet".

Enthusiasts have also minted dot-property, dot-pole, dot-a, dot-ais, dot-archive, dot-www, dot-adult, dot-ah, dot-BUL, dot, sport, dot-wow, dot-aus, dot-aust, dot-chick, dot-dot, dot-liberty (of course!), dot-barter, dot-search, dot-sheesh, dot-zoo and even dot-stupid. Others are highlighted in a list here.

You too can coin as many private TLDs as you have keystrokes: like printing your own money the challenge is getting other people to accept them.




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